A Christmas Spirit Read Online Free

decorations are nice,” she said.
    “Craigmire’s doin’s,” he grumbled. “A waste of time, methinks. Here,” he said, inclining his head toward the kitchen archway. “Help yourself to whatever you can find.”
    “Thanks.” She felt slightly embarrassed, digging in a stranger’s fridge and pantry. But she quickly found lunch meat and bread, so she made a sandwich, found a soda in the door of the refrigerator, and sat down to eat at the long, thick wooden table at the back of the kitchen.
    Gabriel sat across from her.
    He made her more than a bit nervous.
    “Shall I leave you?” he asked.
    Paige looked up from her sandwich and met his gaze. The last thing she possessed was a poker face; he could probably see the hesitancy all over her expression. Who wouldn’t be hesitant? She was shacked up for the night with a dead guy. She shook her head and felt another wave of blush creep up her neck. “No. Please stay.”
    He nodded and continued to watch her eat.
    After a moment of silence, Paige cleared her throat. “How long do you think the lights will be out?”
    Gabriel shrugged, the muscles in his neck flinching. “We’ve no’ had a storm like this in quite some time. I’d warrant a while. February is the usual heavy-snow month. Even if your car was running, there’s no way you’d get through the deep drifts and ice. I fear you’re stuck at Gorloch for a while.”
    Stuck? Well it wasn’t like she had anyone waiting for her, despite what she’d said earlier. Sure, she had reservations in Inverness, but no one was awaiting her arrival. Paige swallowed a sip of soda, wiped her mouth, and studied him. She opened her mouth to ask him something, then shut it. She wanted to know more about him, but she didn’t know what to ask.
    He gave her a slight smile, then scrubbed his shadowed jaw with his hand. “You want to know more about me, aye?”
    An arrogant ghost, she thought. “I do, yes.”
    “Verra well. But,” he said, those green eyes locking onto hers. “When I’m finished, I want to know why a beautiful young maid like yourself is jaunting about the Highlands in a blizzard. Alone. During the holidays.” He leaned forward. “Agreed?”
    She nodded, embarrassed that he thought her beautiful. “Agreed.”
    Stretching his long, lean arms across the table, he played with a knot in the wood with a fingertip and began. “My clan’s ancestral home is no’ far from here,” he said. “A pair of towers, an hour’s ride to the north. They’re derelict now and owned by Scotland’s National Trust.”
    Paige continued to listen intently.
    “I was born on the winter’s solstice of the year 1115.”
    Paige blinked. She nearly choked. “That makes you almost nine hundred years old.”
    A wry smile tilted his mouth and deepened his dimples. “Aye. So it does.”
    Amazed, Paige shifted in her chair and leaned closer. “How did you, um, when did you—”
    A frown furrowed his dark brows, and the muscles in his jaw flinched. “By the hand of a MacDonald, on the eve of my twenty-eighth birthday.”
    Paige gulped.
    Gabriel chuckled. “No’ to worry, lass. ’Tis no doubt that scoundrel wasna a relation of yours. Thankfully, that clan died out long ago. You’re from America, after all.”
    Her hand eased to the heirloom tucked beneath her sweater and hanging from a silver chain around her neck. A clan pin, passed down from the MacDonald women before her.
    Again, she gulped. Her ancestors were from Scotland.
    And she’d heard a similar tale from her grandmother, years and years ago . . .

Chapter Four
    “What’s the matter, lass? You look more ghostly than I do.” Paige blinked and took another sip. She quickly decided to keep her ancestry and tale to herself. Besides. Even if it turned out she was one of those MacDonalds —and that would be a serious coincidence—she herself hadn’t had anything to do with Gabriel’s death. “You were murdered?” The question sounded as absurd as the